Our chances of keeping warming under dangerous levels by the end of this century are increasingly slim, according to two new studies published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. The first study took a statistical approach to examine likely warming scenarios by 2100, finding a less than five percent chance of holding warming below […]
By Tim Radford Scientists have calculated yet another item on the human shopping list that makes up the modern world: plastics. They have estimated the mass of all the plastic bottles, bags, cups, toys, instruments and fabrics ever produced and tracked its whereabouts, as yet another index of the phenomenal change to the face of […]
Thawing tundra may be allowing long-buried pockets of methane to be released into the atmosphere, new research suggests. A study surveying the Mackenzie Delta in Canada, published Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports, suggested that these methane “seeps” on the tundra may be more problematic than previously thought. The study finds that 17 percent of […]
President Trump on Wednesday nominated Sam Clovis, a former economics professor and conservative talk show radio host, to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) top scientific position. Clovis, an early advisor to the Trump campaign, has a master’s in business administration and a doctoral degree in public administration, and appears to have no published scientific […]
By Mary Hoff Klaus Lackner has a picture of the future in his mind, and it looks something like this: 100 million semi-trailer-size boxes, each filled with a beige fabric configured into what looks like shag carpet to maximize surface area. Each box draws in air as though it were breathing. As it does, the […]
By Alex Carlin A recent New York Magazine article about the climate ruin we are facing, by David Wallace Wells, has caused a furor for describing the catastrophes that could happen to our planet by the end of the century if we do not mitigate the harms to our climate and reverse course. This op-ed […]
By Tim Radford One of the world’s most famous climate scientists has just calculated the financial burden that tomorrow’s young citizens will face to keep the globe at a habitable temperature and contain global warming and climate change—a $535 trillion bill. And much of that will go on expensive technologies engineered to suck 1,000 billion […]
A couple things happened late last week that feel worth mentioning, to kick off this week on a hopeful note. First, in a bit of legislative wonkery, the House of Representatives voted against an amendment that would have prevented the Department of Defense from studying how climate impacts threaten national security. To express that in […]
A lot of attention is paid to the floating junkyards on our high seas, but a new study highlights how the problem of marine plastic goes much deeper. Australian researchers were surprised to find high concentrations of microplastics embedded in the seafloor along the southeast coast of Australia. Scientists with the Institute for Marine and […]